Billboard called racy, wrong

A 2007 billboard for Pascal Pour Elle on Willow Road in Glenview.

TRIBUNE PHOTO

TRIBUNE PHOTO

Courtney FlynnTribune reporter

Editor's note: This story originally appeared in the Tribune in May 2007.

A billboard for a salon and medical spa, promoting cosmetic procedures and featuring a woman wearing little more than an off-the-shoulder top, has outraged some Glenview residents who say it sends the wrong message.

"I was shocked," said Regina Thibeau. "I was offended as a woman, angered as a mother and embarrassed as a resident of Glenview."

The 10-foot-by-36-foot sign along Willow Road near Patriot Boulevard depicts a model lying on the beach with lines pointing to "problem" areas on her body, such as facial lines and wrinkles, and corresponding "solutions," including Botox. By Tuesday, more than 300 people had signed petitions asking the owners of the salon and medical spa to replace the billboard, Thibeau said.

"No, I will not bring it down," said Ibgui, a Paris native, who added that the sign is modest compared to what might appear in France. "I will leave it up."

The billboard went up about two weeks ago and is leased through July by Ibgui and his business partner, plastic surgeon Steven Bloch.

"I'd like for them to replace it with another ad," Jackie Lutz said. "To me, a billboard is very different than a magazine ad or a direct mail campaign; I can turn the page in a magazine but I can't avoid Willow Road."

Ibgui said he has returned the phone calls of everyone who has complained, even offering free services at his business. But persuading him to change the billboard could be an uphill battle. Bloch said the billboard does not show anything that's "grossly provocative or titillating" and does not "violate any public morality clauses."

In a recent direct mail campaign, Ibgui and Bloch sent cards to 25,000 households on the North Shore featuring the same picture as the billboard. The mailings brought in so much business that the salon and spa decided to take it to a bigger medium, Ibgui said.

He said the billboard caters, in part, to his "huge" male clientele. "I don't want to sound like a chauvinistic pig, but this is a man's world," he said.

That's the problem, some residents say, and the billboard only makes it worse.

"It doesn't represent us as people whose beauty emanates from within," Thibeau said. "I'm a mother, a wife, a member of the PTA, and this is an affront to everything I work for and try to instill in my children."

Cathe Russe, a mother of four girls, stands behind Ibgui's right to put up the billboard, but she does not like its message. "It demonstrates that there's a set of values they support that are the antithesis of my values," Russe said. "I would love to see it removed."

Lutz and Russe added that by pointing out defects on an "obviously beautiful" woman, the billboard feeds into society's obsession with looks.

The billboard is in unincorporated Cook County, not Glenview, and there's no ordinance on the county's books that regulates the content of billboards unless they depict nudity or graphic language, said Cook County Commissioner Gregg Goslin, whose district includes part of Glenview.

"We don't regulate taste," said Goslin, adding that he is not offended by the billboard. "That's part of the problem here; when you start regulating who's offended and who's not offended, that's just a really tough issue."

A Chicago billboard featuring pictures of a scantily clad man and woman stating, "Life's short. Get a divorce," was taken down this month on the Gold Coast because it did not have a permit.

Ibgui said there's no comparison between that billboard and his. And although some residents said they won't return to Ibgui's salon, he said he's not worried about losing customers. "I don't want to sound cocky, but I'm so big in the business that if I lose a handful of clients, we'll get some new ones," he said. "You don't like what we sell? Goodbye. Good luck. Go somewhere else."

Besides, Ibgui said, he can't please everyone. "You know what? My next billboard is going to be of a 300-pound woman and it will say, 'Could you help me please?' " Ibgui joked. "Then everyone would be after me saying, 'My son is traumatized because you showed me a fat woman.' "You can never win."